Of Seasons, Reasons, and Treasons
ODDLY enough, it was at the very highest structural level of all that I bumped into a most troubling anomaly, which gave rise to the most troubling crise de conscience.
Françoise Sagan broke her novel into three overall “parts” and named them after the seasons in which they take place: Spring, Summer, and Fall. This is a very appealing idea, except for the very unfortunate fact that Fall’s part falls apart, and does so quite flagrantly, at the end. The action in that part starts out in the autumn, as advertised, but then for four of its chapters, it extends way out into the winter, at least through March and possibly even further. And then the very last chapter — still in the part she called “L’automne” — takes place two years later!
As I thought about this blemish, a tiny little puppy-like voice inside of me yipped, “So just pinpoint the dividing line, and go ahead and create another part called ‘Winter’ right there!” But then another, much sterner, voice in me boomed out, trying to rein in any such brazen thoughts: “Breaking the book into more than its official three parts is out of the question; you simply cannot impose your own pet notions on someone else’s book! End of story.”
Although this stern, deference-counseling view sounded like The Voice of Reason booming down from on high, somehow it didn’t quite convince me, and meanwhile that little voice grew bolder, insisting, “To claim that those four chapters take place in the fall is false, no two ways about it.” I had to admit that it deeply bothered me to label a set of four chapters so wrongly.
And then the unsquelched, rebellious yipper — the Voice of Treason — impudently added, “A year has four seasons! Make the book have four seasons!” Instantly the stern Voice of Reason bellowed back, “No, no, and no. Françoise Sagan, for reasons of her own, chose to make her novel La Chamade have just three seasons. Someone else’s quirky personal desires for ‘logic’ or ‘esthetics’ have nothing to do with it. This is a question of respect for the creator. No fourth part. Sorry.”
But that uppity little puppy simply would not be put down, coming right back at me with a powerful parry: “Don’t forget that the very last chapter takes place two years later, in the spring. Including that chapter in the part called ‘L’automne’ is not just a tiny blemish; it’s a total lie, it’s an absurdity, it’s an outrage!”
All at once, a mental avalanche took place, and everything flipped around in my mind. Why not add two more parts? Why would that be disrespectful? It would make the book’s high-level structure not only more symmetric but also truer. Maybe Sagan had her reasons, but maybe not. Authors make mistakes. People forget things. Errare humanum est. And so in the end, the stern master was disregarded, the yipping puppy had a lovely romp, and Parts Four and Five (L’hiver; Plus tard…) were inserted. The Voice of Treason had vanquished the Voice of Reason.
This was a very high-level decision, yes, but on the other hand it was a very, very small decision. It barely affects a thing about the book, when you come down to it, but to me it made it feel much truer at that highest structural level. Brazen? Perhaps. But sometimes brazenness is what is called for. As for the analogous sin, I would compare it to walking out of one’s friend’s house with a paperback Françoise Sagan novel whose front cover had been crudely torn off, returning the next day with a first-edition hardback copy of the same novel in perfect shape, and putting it back up on the shelf where the damaged one had been.
Co-creation and Procreation
I HAVE, in writing this set of reflections on translation, given much thought not just to my own paragraph breaks, but also to my section breaks, and to their titles. If someone someday were to translate this essay into another language (though the idea of doing so eludes all logic, as far as I can tell), I would not want them to blithely ignore all my breakpoint decisions, but if they disagreed with a few here or there, I would certainly be open to a spirited discussion about it, and I’m sure I could be persuaded to accept some changes. I wouldn’t feel that a momentary whim I’d once had was imbued with papal infallibility. And although I truly admire Françoise Sagan’s writing, she’s no pope either. In fact, I feel she has something of a blind spot concerning the placement of breath-marks on all her different levels of structure, so I’m pleased to have had the chance to try to make her work a bit more artistic, at least along this minor dimension, in English.
For me, the bottom line in translation is the belief that a product of the highest artistic caliber is attainable, and I feel that just about any author, no matter how highly regarded, can benefit from occasional small editorial suggestions here and there. In this regard, I always recall how much more beautifully Sviatoslav Richter performed Shostakovich’s preludes and fugues than did Shostakovich himself. Though the notes were all the same, there was a world of difference in how they came out. Of course Shostakovich wrote the melodies and harmonies, and those were all absolutely fixed, but below that level, all was up for grabs. The analogy to a translator’s re-performance of a piece of writing is simple, but it speaks to me.
To be sure, the novel’s author is the primary author and must always remain the primary voice, but in the grand scheme of things, there remains room for local spice here and there, representing the artistic tastes of the translator. At least in my experience, that is what lends to the re-creative activity of translation a profound feeling — hopefully not illusory — of engaging in fresh creation.
The fact that two people are involved, in very different roles, in creating a translated work reminds me of the fact that two parents are required, also playing very different roles, in creating a child. The mother, of course, plays the greater role, because she is the one who actually makes the child. For that reason, the book’s original author could be thought of as the translated work’s metaphorical mother. But a father, too, is needed for procreation, and although his procreative role is certainly far subsidiary to the mother’s, it is nonetheless indispensable. In describing the genesis of a particular child, no one would ever dream of relegating the father to a mere footnote; rather, the two parents are usually seen as equal co-creators, with the father often even being listed first (silly though that seems).
As in procreation, so in co-creation. The translator, though clearly the junior partner in the act, is indispensable in somewhat the same way as is a father, and thus deserves a similar level of recognition as a co-progenitor of the final piece of literature.
Concluding Musings
WHEN, some years ago, I undertook to translate La Chamade out of my passionate reaction, as a reader, to the novel, I wasn’t sure, at first, what my ultimate purpose was in doing this translation. It was certainly not that I wanted to rival or eclipse someone else — indeed, at the outset I didn’t know if any other translation had been done, and in any case, competition was the furthest thing from my mind. Nor did I want to produce a “contemporary” translation, for I’ve never understood, let alone agreed with, the oft-quoted thesis that a great book, no matter how well it has been translated before, always needs a new translation every twenty years, or for each new generation.
No, it was not anything like that. If anything, my motivation was just that, for a constellation of inarticulable and highly personal reasons, I found La Chamade beautiful and touching, and I yearned to re-experience as strongly as possible the emotions it had churned up in me. Merely re-reading the novel would not have allowed me that degree of emotional intensity and intimacy with its characters, but rewriting it in my native language did, and I am extremely glad that I decided to make the attempt.
The entire time I was working on my translation, all sorts of thoughts about the process I was engaged in were accumulating, and in order not to forget them all, I scribbled down dozens of pages of notes for myself. Nonetheless, I would never have guessed that a year later I would wind up writing an essay about the subtle traps and crazy paradoxes that plague the translation of novels in general, let alone that writing that essay would take me nearly as long as doi
ng the translation itself. Although I initially thought of my musings as constituting a preface, I eventually changed my mind and relabeled them “Afterword”, because I felt it was important to indicate that the novel itself is the main course here. But then, as a result of discussions with my friends at Basic Books, my Afterword turned into a short book (or half-book) of its own — this very essay. So be it.
In a nutshell, my essay’s goal has been to combat this wrong idea: “So, some drudge took all those sentences in Language A and put them into Language B… Big deal!” The right idea is that high-quality conversion of a novel from Language A to Language B reflects the depths of the translator’s soul no less than Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter reflects the depths of Ella’s soul.
Ever since my long-gone teen-age years, when I started intensely listening to music and avidly reading about it, I have been delighted when I chanced across a record (or a CD) with liner notes written by the performer. After all, who could be more intimate with a work of music than someone who chose to perform it out of profound love? Such pieces of writing by musicians are, of course, not always very coherent, but they are unfailingly informative in some ways, and on occasion they are vivid and gripping and leave one with an unforgettable set of ideas about the piece, perhaps even with elegant turns of phrase that will reverberate over and over in one’s mind down the years.
Wouldn’t it be nice if skilled translators, too, gave us the benefit, once in a while, of their unique perspective on works of literature they love? For good translators are not just “humble servants” of their authors, but full-fledged artists; indeed, a fine translator, no less than a novelist or poet, is an artist of the word. And these artists — these translator-traders — have tales galore about trades they’ve made in the tropical trade winds of words.
1 In this translation, the singular pronoun “You”, when capitalized, corresponds to the formal or respectful second-person pronoun vous of French, and when uncapitalized, to the informal or intimate pronoun tu. See pages 90-92 of Translator, Trader for more on this convention.
2 In 1960, the French franc was reset to 100 old francs — anciens francs — but a large fraction of the French populace kept speaking for many years only in old francs, as does Claire here, and as do all the characters in La Chamade. 100 old francs were worth roughly 20 American cents, so Antoine’s salary of 200,000 old francs was worth about $400.
Originally published as La Chamade,
copyright © by René Julliard, Paris
Translation copyright © 2009
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Published by Basic Books
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eISBN : 978-0-786-74459-6
That Mad Ache & Translator Page 26
